Psychologists are sometimes curiously touchy about the recent origins of their discipline. For most practical purposes it can be said to have begun with the establishment of Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory in 1879, but, like many other parvenus, psychologists are anxious to dredge up evidence of an older and more distinguished ancestry. Any philosopher who has written about human nature is likely to find himself enrolled as an honorary progenitor. Locke and Hume are usually hijacked in this fashion, but it is not unknown for the family tree to be taken all the way back to Empedocles or Pythagoras. Psychologists tend to refer to their subject as a “science” but are less prone to draw upon the historical background of scientific observers of animal behaviour – Lord Monboddo and the other predecessors of Darwin are perhaps, less appealing. Nevertheless, most psychologists take a practical “scientific” approach to their subject, rather than a philosophical approach. The two disciplines have separated. We librarians, more than most people, can easily trace psychology's roots in philosophy. Dewey (Melvil, not John) was a convinced disciple of William James. James was perhaps the last philosopher‐cum‐psychologist who saw himself as being in the direct line of descent from Locke. Psychology was therefore firmly embedded in the philosophy schedules of the Dewey Decimal Classification Scheme. Generations of public librarians all around the world have struggled with the problem of how to disentangle the two. Even now, in the University of London, the location of Britain's largest psychology collection in Senate House Library causes some heart‐searching among psychologists (Senate House is the university's central arts library, and contains no other basic life sciences material).
Recent years have seen astonishing advances in the neurosciences. We are closer to a real scientific basis for psychology than ever before. In particular, the study of the human genome is beginning to bring out the fact that the study of behaviour is not a case of “nature” versus “nurture”. The two are so closely inter‐twined that you cannot separate their effects: “Science” and “Social Science” meet together. At the same time however, academic philosophy has started branching out in all directions. Looked at cynically this is simply a survival technique. In affluent times universities are quite happy to have a few philosophers tucked away in odd corners pondering the imponderable: they do not cost much, and they add a certain tone. In hard times any philosopher who cannot summon up enough formal logic to embed himself in the study of robotics or artificial intelligence would be well‐advised to latch on to any spare corner of economics or management or psychology or medicine that will have him. Even within King's College London, where the Institute of Psychiatry is noted for its ability to raise massive research funding and the philosophy department is not, the number of philosophers with an interest in concepts of mental abnormality has grown enormously in recent years. Looked at less cynically, this is a praiseworthy trend by abstract academics to examine, support and influence the “real” world. Curiously, clinicians are more concerned with philosophical concepts than academic psychologists. In other branches of medicine the concept of “normality” is so obvious that it does not need thinking about. If someone has the measles or a broken leg you try to treat them so that they have not, but even the most pragmatic psychiatrist has to have some concept of what he is trying to do. The Maudsley Philosophy Group is largely composed of earnest clinicians with an obsessive interest in Heidegger, Husserl and the phenomenological movement.
There is, therefore, some demand for texts in the general subject area of this massive tome. I am very glad that the editors of the Routledge Philosophy Companions have got around to it at last. It should be most strongly emphasised that this is a philosophy text – a book about the philosophy of psychology, not a book about psychology. The forty‐eight contributors are virtually all academic philosophers with an interest in psychology, not psychologists with an interest in philosophy. Furthermore, none of them are clinicians, so that applied focus is lacking. The first section of the book is devoted to the historical background – not the usual waltz through selections from the history of philosophy, but seven solid chapters on topics such as rationalism, empiricism, behaviourism, cognitivism, and the use of the term “quale”. The next seven chapters are devoted to psychological explanation, with a useful introduction by William Bechtel and Cory Wright. The third part contains eight chapters on cognition. The fourth is devoted to philosophical studies of the biological basis of psychology. Recent advances in the neurosciences have so changed psychologists' views that philosophers have had to move rapidly from virtually ignoring the brain to making it central to their studies. The next eight chapters, on perception, are perhaps closest to the traditional view of psychology – philosophical studies of consciousness, dreaming, emotion, vision, etc. The final section, on personhood, covers action and mind, moral judgment, identity, and a Buddhist chapter on eudaimonia.
These 42 chapters form a very tight cohesive group. This is not necessarily a good thing, though it does make the book easier to work through. The authors, even of the last chapter, belong to an Anglo‐American academic grouping with its roots in analytical philosophy. The phenomenologists who loom so largely in my life just at the moment get very short shrift. Even Michael Wheeler, who I know has published on Heidegger, does not introduce him here. Having recently been involved in trying to make works by Tatossian and Scheler (neither mentioned here) comprehensible to English psychiatrists, I sympathise with the editors' unstated decision to avoid some trends in European philosophy, but their absence should be noted. I also noticed very little discussion on artificial intelligence or on the ways in which human‐computer interaction may be changing human ways of thinking. Again, Noel Sharkey is editor of Connection Science and Artificial Intelligence Review and might have written more on this in his chapter on connectionism.
Though I have been slightly critical, I greatly welcome this book. There are an increasing number of academic philosophers who will be keenly interested in it. University libraries catering for philosophy courses, especially those aimed at practical applications of philosophy, should consider it for purchase. I have to admit that I have not read it all through yet. This is not a light‐hearted skip through the topic for mildly interested psychologists but a demanding text for serious students of philosophy. King's College runs a master's degree in Philosophy and Mental Health. There is ample reading here for a whole year's study at that level. Psychology libraries should not automatically put it on their wish lists without checking that they have potential readers for it. The blurb says that it “will be of interest to anyone studying psychology … ”. I would dispute this statement. There are hundreds of people who will study psychology in depth – I have a whole class of doctoral students in clinical psychology in mind at the moment – most of whom will go successfully through their academic and professional careers without giving a moment's thought to most of the topics discussed. The few that do will find a lot to chew on here.
